Five news stories we won't see next year

After reading Jon Fine's column in the Dec. 19 issue of Businessweek where he writes five media news stories that we are unlikely to see next year (in jest), I decided to write a few of my own that pertain to the online marketing industry:

• (New York, Jan. 14) BigAdAgency Worldwide, after recommending corporate blogging to several of its Fortune 500 clients, highlighting the importance of ingraining blogging into its culture by setting up blog accounts for any of its employees want to blog, has decided to launch its own corporate blog along with over 2000 employee blogs.
• (Chicago, Mar. 21) Novelle, the number 2 marketer of bath and skin products decided that it had strayed too much from its 2002 strategy of ignoring the existence of the Internet and is putting its marketing campaigns 'back on course'. It is integrating this new directive by firing its interactive agency and increasing its network TV media buys.
• (Los Angeles, Apr. 1) Account Supervisor at agency Farring Interactive, Louis Stern was shocked yesterday when his client, a well known consumer packaged goods brand thought that the cost of an online promotional program was too low and asked Stern if he could increase the project estimate.
• (San Francisco, July 18) Executive directors of J. Ogilvy GSCR Worldwide have decided to instill upon all employees a mandatory 1 hour of industry news reading each day, where they are not allowed to work on any client projects. This comes just one week after the brass called for a 6pm end-of-workday moving forward.